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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   31379 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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To Lyft's credit, they basically said this is a rounding error and they don't care, but I think that has more to do with the pragmatism of any reasonable algorithm being exploitable in some way. How do you stop this without punishing poorly paid volunteers who are already a huge step up over contractors? Not easily, and solving problems for the 1% of troublemakers is often a road to hell.

I think what you're getting out of this is less, they don't care, and more that they make more money off of honest people than they would spend on labor to fix the problem and so they pursue a profitable path. They have no problem paying dishonest people, as long as they keep making money they don't care who is getting paid.

I'm of the schizo opinion that things like self-checkout are a form of psychological warfare against trust in society. Every time I self-checkout, I scan everything correctly, but I'm aware of how easy it would be not to. To tuck a couple small items in the corner of my tote bag and never scan them, to scan the $2 switch five times instead of scanning the four $10 switches, to ring up the organic carrots as ordinary carrots. And in my head I'm aware there is nothing the store will do to stop me, and that their profit margin is such to account out of the money they make on me for the person who doesn't scan it all. And that sense of being a chump grates on me over time, until eventually I start stealing things.

We've already seen this happen with "free" media, where internet commenters will act as if it is a personal affront that Youtube has advertisements, while ignoring that they can pay a pittance each month to remove all ads. Once people get used to free stuff, they can't stand the idea of paying for it.

Does self-check-out work differently in the States? At least in the UK, you need to put everything on a counter with a scale, that's pretty sensitive to the point where a minor discrepancy between an item put there and an item scanned and put in the bagging tray will get it to lockup till manual intervention by staff. All on camera too. Everything has barcodes too, so I doubt you can just scan produce differently. Or maybe I'm just naive here, I don't know.

The US mega grocery chain I shop at has all these things, but they are so hopelessly clapped out with no maintenance that the single attendant covering all 8 units spends 75% of their time clearing malfunctions so people can keep scanning and the rest of the time staring at their phone.

At the two major grocery chains near me, most fresh produce does NOT have a barcode to scan, just a four-digit code you have to type in yourself. So if you set an expensive steak on the checkout scale and type in the code for broccoli, it'll ring up as broccoli no problem. The self-checkout does have a voice announce out loud what fruit/vegetable you just rang up, but that's about it for enforcement.

I hate any store with self-checkout that does not disable those scales. They seem to have been designed with the assumption that you will not ever want to reorganize the inside of your bag as you put stuff in it. I end up having to bother the attendant every 2 items.

I think you're being naive here.

The scale exists, but it doesn't know the difference between a pound of ham and a pound of prosciutto, scan the ham, put the prosciutto on the scale, scan the ham again, put the ham on the scale. And they're not constantly monitoring the tape for minor irregularities in movement.

They’re very precise. Steaks are individually plastic wrapped here, so you’d have to find a ham that weighs exactly 454 grams or whatever. They beep very loudly when there’s any issue. The staff meticulously check your bag if the system flags any issues. I’m sure people still steal stuff, but it’s less easy than the original post assumes.

You clearly live in a much nicer area than me; meticulousness is absolutely not part of standard operating procedure at my local grocery stores.

THey have the technical ability to be very precise, but any modern store is going to have them calibrated to allow some gratuitous shifting.

You need only look at the difference between plastic and reusable bags to see how generous they must be by default. If you put a reusable bag down without an item, they're heavy enough to register as one, so there's a bit of technique to putting your first item down.

My local grocery stores' self-checkout kiosks all have a special "reusable bag" button - you press it, put your bags on the bagging surface, and continue on with grocery scanning. My one issue with it is that my bags tend to collapse in on themselves when empty, and the scale freaks out when I correct that to put stuff in them.

They make you weigh the bags first here. I suppose this presents the opportunity to finagle the system, but they always seem to watch me like hawks, and I’m hardly the median grocery store shoplifter demographically.

Hmm.. I'd like to claim that I've been prevented from just rescanning the same item twice, but I'm not sure of that. I'll try and see if that works for duplicate items next time I'm shopping.

I just double-scanned some store-labeled bagels today. I had two packages and one of the barcodes was damaged, so I scanned the other one twice. Worked fine. Even when I picked up the first one off the scale (to rescan it) and put the second one on, Indiana Jones-style.

I could 100% see fresh sliced deli meat being unique enough in a barcode (Item, weight to 1/100th of a pound, timestamp down to a second) that simple double scanning logic would catch you messing with this.

For pre-packaged anything meat with similar package weights, though, you'd doubtless be able to double scan.

The most I steal is exotic peppers being coded in as jalapenos or white onions as yellow, and that's 90% convenience of fast scanning and 10% the price difference.

I can scan the same item twice at my local grocery store. (The legitimate use-case is to scan one item X times when you're buying X copies, rather than manually going through the entire stack of the copies).

Maybe the scanners used in other countries are different, but here you will not be prevented from scanning the same item twice, provided that an equivalent item is placed on the scale. I often do this with multiple half gallons of milk for convenience reasons. The UPCs are the same.

This ignores Target and Home Depot, which allow you to use the hand scanner and never weigh the items anyway.

And that sense of being a chump grates on me over time, until eventually I start stealing things.

I don't experience this feeling myself, but I kind of agree that Self-Checkouts exist in an unusual 'middle-trust' zone where they are giving you some benefit of the doubt and yet still making you go through the motions to 'prove' your honesty by scanning everything and in theory if they find out that you took something without paying they could drag you back in and prove that you knowingly failed to scan an item with the intent to steal it. They won't because evidently the losses to such incidents are not worth hiring somebody to man a checkout counter, much less pushing the prosecution of a <$50 shoplifting case.

The real 'high trust' option is Honesty Boxes and that's surely not an option for any large corporation.

And it isn't like they're watching you to reward honest behavior! You don't get a prize for "100 items scanned at self-checkout without incident" or a badge that says "Certified Honest Customer". They just expect to make more money off you than they lose over the course of your patronage, and they are trying to zero in on the minimum level of surveillance needed to get you to follow the rules.

Me, I like the option of self-checkout because most of the time I'm picking up very few things at one time and if the self-checkout can shave 2-5 minutes off waiting in line I'm happy to do the work myself.

yet still making you go through the motions to 'prove' your honesty by scanning everything

As opposed to what? Tallying everything in my head? "Oh, how much was this carrot again? Let me go back to the carrots to check."

Barcodes are a labor saving device, not a compliance mechanism. It's absolutely trivial to circumvent.

Yes, and if YOU have to scan everything, rather than a cashier, that is also a labor-saving device... for the store that doesn't have to pay the cashier.

They're adding in an extra step for YOU, the customer to undertake mostly for the store's convenience. And they expect you to be honest while you do it, while still implementing anti-theft measures.

If you want an alternative, Sam's Club does Scan and Go where you can use your phone to scan your stuff as you shop, pay online, then mosy on past the checkout counter to the friendly staffer at the door who briefly checks if you've paid for all the items you said you bought.

Yes, we live in an era where every single person has a bar-code reader in their possession at all times.

THAT would be one hell of an alternative. Scan everything you're buying, and pay digitally (or pay at some automated kiosk), and then walk out the door.

Amazon Fresh had the best model for this, Just Walk Out. Cameras watch everything you do, associate you with the items you pick up and walk out of the store with, and charge you.

Unfortunately a few weeks back the store near me abandoned this. Now they've got a regular self checkout and "dash carts" that are basically a mobile self checkout, where you still have to scan items. According to Amazon customers didn't like it, which is baffling to me. Here's the press release: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-just-walk-out-dash-cart-grocery-shopping-checkout-stores

The accuracy was perfect in my experience. To use Just Walk Out you'd have to scan your Amazon app when you entered and exited. Maybe folks figured out a great way to defeat the tech and theft was too great? But if not then they'd be much harder to defeat than regular self check out.

From what I recall, Amazon Fresh was the one where they needed to outsource the recognition to Indians for double-checking?

That was the media lying about RLHF.

Seems petty to me to complain about scanning your own items when it's a miniscule additional task compared to visiting the store in person, carrying items from the shelves to the exit and (gasp!) bagging your own items.

I also don't see how using your own phone to scan the things and using your own phone to pay makes it easier. What if I have a 10 year old brick that takes a minute to open anything?

We can quibble about who benefits the most from self checkout. The point I'm making is that the reason you scan stuff at self checkout is not to prove that you are honest, it's because that's the simplest way to implement self checkout.

Now, the guy at Sam's club who checks your cart and your receipt - that's obviously a compliance mechanism. It's probably not feasible to stop and frisk every shopper in a normal store, especially since in normal stores you bag your groceries and at Sam's club you don't.

They won't because evidently the losses to such incidents are not worth hiring somebody to man a checkout counter, much less pushing the prosecution of a <$50 shoplifting case.

The places around me that have kept their self-check out counters almost always have some staff at hand that man multiple counters at once, both to supervise and help out if there are any issues. Perhaps 1 staff member per 5+ counters.

And that person is always busy, either helping someone who can't figure something out, or verifying ID for alcohol sales, or taking an item off for a customer who accidentally scanned it twice, or...

And they're always needed, because at some places they'll refuse to accept those shitty mandated-by-law cloth bags are empty when you start.

Pro tip: Don't put the bag down until it already has a heavy item in it (Canned/Frozen food). The scale is more forgiving with heavy items.

Right, there's probably some benefit to honesty by having a real human present, I'd bet on the margins it makes people less likely to cheat.

But that staffer isn't going to catch someone failing to scan a $10 item or scanning something as a different item unless they're aggressively looking for it.

And in the hypothetical where I scan the ham twice and miss the prosciutto, or scan the cheap lightswitch ten times and throw the heavy duty switches in the bag, and they catch me, "Oh man, lucky you noticed! Long day at work, I screwed up, let me fix it quick." No one is getting arrested, no consequences.

Most people put media goods in a different mental bin than tangible physical goods I think, even if the physical good is very cheap. That's why "you wouldn't download a car" didn't land with anyone. The to-go rebuttal is "I bloody damn would, if cars could be downloaded".

I can't say your mindset is something I relate to. Even if I didn't have a reptilian aversion to even looking like I'm in position to take something without paying, I imagine I would feel disgusted with myself for contributing to the lowtrustification of my society for the sake of a few dollars of groceries. (I completely lack that aversion when it comes to downloading pirated media from the internet.)

I imagine I would feel disgusted with myself for contributing to the lowtrustification of my society for the sake of a few dollars of groceries.

How would you be contributing?

To be clear, I don't steal from self checkout, and doubt I will begin to. But it grates on me, as a citizen, that I know that I am paying Home Depot, and they have decided to allow dishonest people to steal from them rather than pay an honest cashier, counting on me to not steal from them.

Truth be told, their pricing reflects the extra "shrink", so you actually are indirectly paying for other people stealing due to their corresponding margins that they choose. It's been a while since I worked there, but I'd hazard a guess that they increase margins by about 2-3% to offset increased theft.

You are paying indirectly for other people stealing, but not because they raised prices, just because they couldn't lower prices as much as they'd otherwise be able to after reducing cashier hours.

If the money they have to spend to offset increased theft was less than the money they'd have to keep spending on non-self-checkout cashiers then they'd happily keep the extra cashiers and the extra profit.

That assumes we all just care about store prices, though. If self-checkout raises shrinkage from 1.5% to 2.5% of revenues and reduces labor costs from 15% to 13% of revenues (all numbers here are 10% from Google and 90% pulled out of my hat) then price conscious shoppers are going to push for self-checkout, but there may be shoppers who hate the extra work, or like or hate the reduced contact, or have opinions on changes in line lengths ... or, while we're on the subject, I suppose there may be a few shoppers who would rather pay 2% more to employ more cashiers instead of 1% more to enrich more thieves.

And in fact slightly nicer grocery stores (and fancy ones) both currently still exist and at least appear to be doing well for precisely this reason! Hard to separate out the geographic effects, and I do have an admittedly suburban bias, so can't say that the tradeoff you describe is for sure the reason why, but seems reasonable despite that.

I still opt for the line almost every time though. Scanning, let alone bagging, really does feel like work to me, so if someone will do it for free? Sign me up. I'll wait a little longer in line, no problem (though shorter would be better, and long lines do actually drive some people away -- my mother hates WinCo for this reason)

There's lots of high-end options out there these days. We tried delivery and curbside pickup in 2020, and the former wasn't worth the price but the latter is still how we do our regular grocery shopping. A few bucks extra, and we can't pick produce ourselves, but saving 40 minutes per trip is usually more than worth it.

Presumably, shops go from "self-checkout" to "hiding shit behind metal bars" because they found out that if they leave things out, they get stolen (more than the shop could absorb through raising prices). Thus, every additional thief contributes to the removal of high-trust features.

(Compare and contrast with media, where several game developers famously endorsed piracy, presumably due to the additional popularity being worth more than the loss on the unsold copies. And music gets uploaded to Youtube by the artists themselves.)

(Compare and contrast with media, where several game developers famously endorsed piracy, presumably due to the additional popularity being worth more than the loss on the unsold copies. And music gets uploaded to Youtube by the artists themselves.)

But here the transaction isn't between the developer or the musician, it's between you and the host who builds the platform and pays for it so that you can view the video. Why is youtube obligated not to turn a profit on you?

Youtube's free to choose a profit model that doesn't enshittify my experience of their service, if they find that adblock is making them struggle. They don't seem to be struggling. (Wikipedia famously makes money from donations. I wonder if Youtube could do that, even in theory.)

I find that letting people who watch ads provide Youtube's profit margin instead of me doesn't make me feel guilty. Perhaps it's because I don't believe they're watching ads out of civic duty, but rather out of indifference/ignorance of adblock.

Compare: freemium mobile games where a couple of whales make it profitable, and the rest of the players are just there to bulk the audience up. Should the f2p players feel guilty, or whales feel like chumps? (Whales should feel like chumps in my opinion, but due to vastly overpaying for pixels, not for being taken advantage of by f2p players).

Youtube's free to choose a profit model that doesn't enshittify my experience of their service, if they find that adblock is making them struggle.

And my point is what right do you have to any experience of their service without paying for it?

Because I can and there is nothing unethical about this?

I can download youtube videos and strip out ads added by creators with sponsorblock, Youtube can try blocking this actions.

And Youtube's free to choose a profit model that doesn't enshittify my experience of their service.

And I am free to not pay for Twitter and Youtube.

Youtube can try blocking this actions.

And Youtube's free to choose a profit model that doesn't enshittify my experience of their service.

This is the tension I don't get. If youtube is allowed to block your actions, then what is enshittifying about it?

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The same right as I have to play a freemuim game without paying for it, or use a donation-based service without donating. There's no explicit or implicit contract that says I must pay; they simply expect me to willingly make some money for them.

Like I said, I simply don't viscerally parse it as stealing if I'm not taking any physical items away and they're clearly thriving. Whatever their contract is with their ad providers, or a game developer's contract with a publishing platform, it is beyond my inner morality. If and when it turns out that free ad-based platforms are dying out in favor of paid access only, I will consider how my actions contributed to that. Until then, it appears that my eyeballs are payment enough for Youtube.

P.S. Advertisement and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race, in general. If I watch a thousand ads for a product I don't want and would never buy, or in some cases would avoid out of spite, it appears that both me and the ad provider are worse off.

Sure but then they aren't enshittifying your experience, because your experience doesn't exist except in the form they hand it to you.

I don't find it wrong to watch something without paying for it, or even to do so while avoiding the ads. But it's obvious to me that one has no right to complain that one's ability to do so has been unjustly limited, as it had no right in it to start.

If the freemium game were suddenly moved to a pay model, I wouldn't find that a wrong action by the developer.

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